Happy 40th birthday, Spider-Man Comics Weekly!

Thanks to Kid Robson's blog, I know that in a few days' time it'll be the 40th anniversary of the launch of Spider-Man Comics Weekly.

At the time, this was a very exciting event for me. Having been avidly reading The Mighty World of Marvel for the previous few months, to suddenly get yet another Marvel UK mag foisted upon me was indeed a special treat.

But how could it not be? Not only did it feature everyone's favourite wall-crawler, it also starred Thor. I was always a big fan of the early incarnation of Thor, with his long-handled hammer and lack of muscles. And, though his handle gradually got shorter and his muscles bigger, I remained gripped, as trolls, gods and other supernatural luminaries were added.

With issue #48, the comic adopted the glossy covers that made it and other Marvel UK mags feel so much better than their British rivals. With issue #50, Iron Man was added to the roster and the comic seemed as close to perfection as it could ever hope to be.

What tales that comic brought into my life: the death of George Stacy, the menace of Mangog, the hypno-neanderthal robot from outer space, and a whole bunch more.

Then, just as excitement hit a peak, with six-armed Spidey tangling with Morbius, the comic disappeared from my local newsagents.

Would it ever return?

Yes it would.

But when it returned, several months later, it had been magically transformed into Super Spider-Man with the Super-Heroes and had adopted The Titans' landscape format.

This was good. It meant I got twice as much drama for my money. It meant I got Dr Strange. It meant I got the adventures of The Thing. It meant I got even more Iron Man and even more Thor.

And, of course, it was during this era that Gwen Stacy died.

But storm clouds were looming over Marvel UK. As though to warn us of the dark days ahead, it wasn't long before Super Spider-Man merged with the comic whose format had inspired it, as it became Super Spider-Man and the Titans.

Later, the comic returned to portrait format and, after the failure of his own book, Captain Britain joined it.

This wasn't such good news, as Captain Britain in that era was terrible and he was always doing things I wasn't interested in, like rescuing the Queen or hanging around on the Ark Royal.

In 1979, Super Spider-Man became Spider-Man Comic, the glossy covers gave way to matt ones and the comic was crammed with a ludicrous six strips, meaning you'd barely started on reading a tale before you hit the words, "To be continued!"

Clearly the writing was on the wall-crawler for our once-mighty mag. Suddenly it seemed cheap, uncared for by those creating it and disposable.

As if to rub it in, it later suffered the indignity of merging with the equally clueless Hulk comic before disappearing forever from my local newsagents.

My knowledge of what happened after that is fuzzy but I do know the comic's fate from that point on was a dispiriting one, involving attempts to cash-in on a TV show that could hardly be called a rating blockbuster, and increased juvenilization.

Still, one has to accept that the comic, like all of us, was a victim of the reality that nothing good lasts forever, and if its ultimate decline proved to be both depressing and frustrating, at least its heyday lasted long enough to see me through a great big chunk of my youth. How would I have known of the glory of Asgard without it? How would I ever have encountered the Jackal? How would I know that Iron Man has a slide rule in his gauntlet?

The answer is I wouldn't. And, for this, and all the other things I learned about super-herodom from it, I shall be eternally grateful.

Spider-Man Annual 1977. Of Savages, Punishers and dresses.

Ah-ah-ah-ah-augh-yodel-odel-odel-aug-yodel-augh-ah-argh!

That's right! That awesome jungle call can mean just one thing!

I'm fixating on Ron Ely!

As we all know, for any sane human being, there can only be two Tarzans in this world - Johnny Weissmuller and Ron Ely.

But the man they didn't call, "Rocket Ron," had another claim to fame. He wasn't just Tarzan. He was Doc Savage, Man of Bronze. And Doc Savage makes an appearance in Marvel UK's 1977 Spider-Man Annual, as Spider-Man teams up with the archaic adventurer.

In fact it's not really a team-up because they never meet. Instead, in the modern age, Spider-Man finds himself having to finish off a 1930s' case that involved Doc Savage, when a woman from another world shows up at a building site and complains she's being bothered by a giant monster.

Savage had helped her trap the beast but Spider-Man, being more worldly-wise than his predecessor, soon realises that women can lie and that she's the bad guy.

It does seem odd that a seasoned crime-fighter like Savage would be unaware that women can lie but the most unlikely revelation is that, thanks to having done a quick course in languages, Peter Parker can understand alien tongues. Building his own web-shooters, creating spider-shaped bugging devices, understanding alien languages - is there nothing the lad can't do?

After this opener, our hero finds himself teaming up with the Punisher to stop Moses Magnum from gassing people to death in a South American death camp. With its images of people being dissolved by nerve gas, it's a lot more gruesome than you'd expect of a Spider-Man tale from this era but that's the Punisher for you, dragging everything and everyone down to his own level. The tale's most memorable moment has to be when Magnum pulls off the captive Spider-Man's mask to reveal a face which - thanks to a cunning disguise that seems to consist of two gob-stoppers - looks nothing like Peter Parker.

But the best tale of the book - and I'd say the one that feels most like Spider-Man - is the final one, when our hero has to help an ex-footballing scientist rescue his daughter from kidnappers, leading him to re-enact a failed run in a game he played at the same venue years earlier. Unfortunately, thanks to the need to fit the story into the annual, it's heavily edited here. The loss of the opening few pages is no great loss but a later scene with Peter Parker and MJ at a university shindig ends up making no sense at all. This is a shame, as MJ's wearing a rather nice dress.

To be honest, what matters most to me about all these stories is they're drawn by Ross Andru, and I'll fight to the death to defend my claim that Ross Andru's my favourite Spider-Man artist of them all, occupying that stylistic middle ground, as he does, between Gil Kane and John Romita.

So there you have it; Spider-Man Annual 1977. All the fun you could want for a mere £1.10. Now to leap off this conveniently placed waterfall, wrestle with a crocodile and then punch a lion in the face.

I don't have to do such things.

I just like to.

Gil Kane: Origins of Marvel Covers.

My post the other day about changes to the cover of The Avengers #59 when the tale was reprinted in Marvel UK's Avengers #86 reminded me of instances where, short of covers to reprint, Marvel UK saw fit to improvise.

A classic example's the cover of Spider-Man Comics Weekly #78 which rather ingeniously recycled the cover to Iron Man #45 for its tale of the Kingpin's raid on ESU during a student protest. So dense am I that when I first saw the Iron Man cover - because I'd seen the Spider-Man one first - I thought the Iron Man pic was some sort of homage to it.

And that brings me to another possible pair of examples.

The covers to Spider-Man Comics Weekly numbers 93 and 94 don't come from the original Amazing Spider-Man comics that contained those stories but, like the covers above, are clearly the handiwork of Gil Kane. As Kane was one of Marvel's top cover artists - and Marvel US rarely went to the trouble of paying its artistic big-hitters to do its UK covers - I'm assuming that, as with Spider-Man Comics Weekly #78, the images were recycled and amended from some other source. But from what mags did that Kane artwork originate? If you happen to know, I'd be delighted to hear from you.

Amazing Spider-Man #46. Good? It's a Shocker!

Back when I started collecting comics - as opposed to reading them then throwing them away - the first issue of Spider-Man Comics Weekly I collected and put in my Big Cardboard Box of Posterity was issue #40, which, all sharp-eyed observers amongst us will spot, reprinted Amazing Spider-Man #46. It featured the debut of the Shocker, surely the only super-villain ever to be inspired by a duvet. That is unless there's such a villain as Duvet Man, with his incredible tog powers.

Arm still in a sling from his fight with the Lizard, Spidey's swinging around town when he comes across brand new super-villain the Shocker committing a robbery. With the usual Spider-Man style, he then proceeds to get knocked out. This is a cue for our hero to return to civilian life and meet up with friends and family.

In one of those happy coincidences that almost make you think these things are planned, he bumps into Harry Osborn who offers him the chance to share a luxury apartment with him, rent free. Then Aunt May tells Peter she's planning on moving in with Anna Watson, meaning PP doesn't have to worry about leaving her alone. Thus begins a whole new phase in the life of Peter Parker.

But it's the same old routine for Spider-Man as he catches up with the Shocker committing yet another robbery and this time defeats him by the simple expedient of webbing his thumbs so he can't fire his vibro-blasters. Exit one villain, enter a swingy new pad.

But still a shadow hangs over Peter Parker. Why can't he shake the feeling that something's wrong?

When I think of Spider-Man, I always think first and foremost of the era when he was sharing a flat with Harry Osborn, so this issue signals the start of what I regard as the real Spider-Man. On top of that, I've always had a soft spot for the Shocker. Despite repeat appearances, he might never have amounted to much - mostly thanks to the fact his weakness was having opposable thumbs - but who cares? He had attitude and that's what I like. Bearing in mind, though, that he developed his ground-breaking vibro-technology in a prison workshop, you do have to wonder just who supplies prison workshop equipment in New York City. Is it SHIELD?

Unlikely penitentiary exploits aside, the thing that strikes me reading this issue is just how wordy it is. It seems like Stan Lee was in a competition to see how many speech balloons, thought bubbles and captions he could pack into every panel.

And you know what?

It's great. None of that fancy modern, "Let the pictures tell the story," nonsense. You were handing over your 12 cents and, Goddammit, Stan Lee was determined to make sure you got your 12 cents worth.

So there you have it. So crammed with things is the tale, there's even time for Fred Foswell to play at being Patch the stool pigeon in an attempt to discover Peter Parker's secret - a bid that fails miserably thanks to the ex-Big Man being the world's most gullible human being.

Maybe I got lucky or maybe I'm biased or maybe nostalgia warps the mind but in hindsight it seems to me that if you're going to start collecting Spider-Man, this is probably as good an issue as you could begin with. Perhaps, as with Peter Parker and Aunt May's simultaneous moves to new homes, there really is a plan to it all.

Steve Who Does Comics - A Man of Letters.

Hudson Leick gains me my SFX  immortality. 

Wherever you go on the Internet, it's well known that Steve Who Does Comics is a man of erudishun and littrassy. Therefore it should come as no shock to the keen-minded reader that I may in my time have attempted to get letters accepted by various periodicals.

Insanely, despite my way with words, my one success was in an issue of SFX magazine, about ten years ago, where, in the guise of a pair of lesbians, I demanded they print more pictures of Xena: Warrior Princess actress Hudson Leick. I actually wasn't that fussed about whether they published more photos of Hudson Leick or not. I just felt that a letter demanding more photos of an attractive woman might press the right buttons with an editorial staff of geeky types who liked to think of themselves as laddish, and therefore increase my chances of publication.

Reader, that ploy, shameful as it was, succeeded, and the Hudson Leick as Callisto photo above is the one they printed in response to it.

Sadly my earlier ventures into the vale of such egomania brought less success. And that's where comics come into it.

Despite sending a whole bunch of letters to Marvel UK when I was a child, not one ever got published - not even the one that pointed out the Silver Surfer shouldn't need to dodge when the Hulk throws boulders at him.

My sister, however, only ever wrote one letter to them. All it did was criticise them. That letter got published in Spider-Man Comics Weekly. I won't say which issue because then she'd probably kill me but it was a John Romita issue and featured the Spider-Slayer. I'm not sure what it says about me that, even after nearly forty years, there's still a little part of me in which it rankles that my repeated efforts failed where her single effort succeeded.

Still, I can always recompense myself with the knowledge that she doesn't have a blog like I do, one with a million adoring fans whose lives would collapse if I didn't tell them whether I like Supergirl #8 more or less than Supergirl #7. On top of that, I know that not everyone's had the nightmare experience with letters that I have, so I might as well ask you while you're here; have you ever had any letters to the editor published, and just when and where?

Super Spider-Man #171. The Death of Gwen Stacy & the Green Goblin.

Something very strange happened in the Autumn of 1975. A number of the comics I'd been getting week-in and week-out for several years disappeared without trace from my local newsagents. The Mighty World of Marvel, The Avengers and Spider-Man Comics Weekly all vanished at around the same time. If not for Planet of the Apes, what would I have had to keep me going? Fortunately, within a few months they were all back. But when Spider-Man Comics Weekly returned, it was in a whole new form.

It had been Titanised.

Like that other Marvel UK comic, Spider-Man's weekly mag was now printed sideways. This was good. Thanks to it allowing them to print two pages of artwork side-by side on every physical page, this meant you got twice as many pages for your money.

So what did you get?

You got trauma.

No sooner had the comic reappeared than this happened; Gwen Stacy died.

Now, I managed to miss the issue where she went but I sure as shooting heck had the next one, in which I discovered that in my absence Gwen had bought it. This was terrible. Gwen was blonde. She wore nice boots. She wore an Alice band. How could they kill such a creature? On top of that, by the end of this issue, the Green Goblin was gone too.

To say this was powerful stuff for a twelve year old would be no matter of hyperbole. Seeing Spider-Man clutching the corpse of his long-time girlfriend was quite the most moving thing I'd ever read in my life. This story and the ones that followed, as Peter Parker tried - and sometimes failed - to come to terms with the death of Gwen Stacy had a potency I'd never seen before in a comic and left an impression on me that remains to this day. I still regard the events of the next couple of years on that strip as the greatest era Spider-Man ever had. One that only dissipated when Ross Andru left the mag and Peter Parker graduated.

Two into one will go. The landscape format that showed us a whole new way of looking at comics.

Fortunately there was more. After that Spider-Man classic, the issue gave us a Gene Colan Dr Strange story. I don't remember if I could make sense of the tale at the time but, looking at it now, I don't have a clue what's going on. Dr Strange and Clea are in Dormammu's Dread Dimension but Strange has lost his powers and is having to rely on Clea to do "pagan" magic to achieve something or other. It's a bit of a surprise to discover Dr Strange's normal magic wasn't pagan. Now I'm left not at all sure what kind of magic it was. There's some sort of junkie in it, a man who seems to be Clea's father, Dormammu, Umar and various others and, frankly, I'm left bewildered by it all. It does though end with a giant Dormammu climbing up out of a huge crack in the Earth, ready to perform some evil deeds or other. So, if it leaves you bamboozled, at least it makes you want to read the following issue.

Next we get a centre-spread poster featuring Luke Cage and Mace. Like virtually all artwork produced specially for Marvel's UK comics, it has to be said it's not great.

Nor is the specially produced splash page for the George Tuska Iron Man tale that follows it. Shell-Head's up against The Controller who I think turned up in the pages of Jim Starlin's Captain Marvel. The presence of this tale baffles me. Up until now I was under the impression Marvel UK's Iron Man reprints ended when the comic switched to landscape format. Now I've discovered they didn't. This means I must've read years of Iron Man stories from that point on, with no recall of them at all. Essential Iron Man Vol 3 clearly beckons, as I try to find out what happened in all those tales I've forgotten.

Next it's a Thor adventure as he sets out to tackle Dr Doom after rescuing a protesting girl from a mini-riot. He soon finds out Doom's kidnapped her father in order to get him to build him some missile silos. In the flashback, the girl's clearly aged at least ten years since he was abducted, which implies he's taking an awful long time to build those silos and that Doom blatantly kidnapped the wrong silo scientist. In order to lure Doom out into the open, Don Blake plants a story in the papers that he's developed a cosmetic surgery technique that can cure any disfigurement. This seems rather thoughtless of him, as the hopes of disfigured people the world over will be built up and then cruelly dashed for no good reason. Aww but who cares? It's drawn by John Buscema, so every panel's a thing of simple beauty.

We finish off with a Thing/Black Widow team-up that I assume comes from the pages of Marvel Two-In-One. Much as I love the Thing - and the Black Widow - I'm not convinced Two-In-One was always the greatest comic Marvel produced, and this tale does little to change that. The story's pretty silly, with the Widow at one point whipping off her top to reveal she has the parts for a disruptor cannon attached to her back, hidden in a strip of fake skin. Let's own up, we've all done it. Meanwhile, the Thing spends half the story hauling in a three mile long stretch of cable to stop a bomb going off. As well as the somewhat lame story, the art looks terrible. Either Klaus Janson's inking doesn't suit Bob Brown's pencils or Janson's habitually lavish use of ink suffers unduly from being shrunk to half normal size.

So, was the landscape format a good thing?

Of course it was.

As said before, the great thing about it was you got twice as much story for your money. Where else would you get an entire 20 page Spider-Man story, plus seven to nine pages each of Dr Strange, Iron Man, Thor and the Thing, and a double-page pin-up, all for 9 pence? The downside isn't really the small size of the artwork. Apart from the Thing story, it really doesn't suffer. The main downside is the small size of the letters page which only has room for two letters. As it's clear from one of those letters that the comic's only recently switched to the new format, it would've been nice to see more room for fan reaction to the switch.

At last - a hero like no other!

As you can see, today's picture is a lovely blank sheet of paper. Well, they say there's nothing to stimulate the imagination quite like nothingness, and this blank sheet certainly did that.

You see, it's no ordinary blank sheet. It comes from the inside back cover of Spider-Man Comics Weekly #50 and was produced for a competition they were running for readers to create a super-hero. As I mentioned in my review of that comic, a few months back; Reader, I entered the competition. Long and hard did I labour, for what must've been all of an hour, and when I'd finished, that blank sheet was filled by a character to send chills down the spine of any wrong-doer.

The Masked Manhunter.

The Masked Manhunter was like no hero you'd ever seen before. In fact he was like four heroes you'd seen before. He had a name taken from a not-at-all obscure DC hero of the time and a costume identical to the Black Panther's except he had boots like Captain America, a cape like everyone and carried a handgun. Strapped to one of his thighs was a pistol holster. Strapped to the other was a Fray Bentos tin.

Now, as I can see no possible reason for a super-hero to carry a meat pie into battle, I'm sure that, at the time, I didn't intend it to be a pie tin, but exactly what it was meant to be, I don't have a clue.

It's at this point I feel I should impress you by revealing the Masked Manhunter so wowed the editorial staff at Marvel UK that he won first prize, and so my career in comic books took its first step towards making me the industry giant I am today.

Sadly, despite his pie tin, the Masked Manhunter was never heard of again and my career in comic books only lasted until I once tried to draw one for my own amusement and gave up after three panels. The thing I soon discovered is that thinking up stories is a lot more fun than drawing them.

As for the contest; after all these years, all I remember is that one of the finalists was a creature called Anthracite - a monster made of living coal. I assume this meant he had all the powers of coal. Quite what the powers of coal are I'm not too sure. I suppose if it was a bit nippy you could set fire to him to keep warm but then he'd give off unheroic amounts of smoke; whereas a hero called Coalite - as those of us who grew up during the 1970s' power cuts could tell you - would've given off virtually no smoke at all. Then again, there were always the insane fire-hazard powers of Paraffin Heater Man.

Regardless of all speculation of heroes created in response to power cuts, this leads me to one question; Have you ever invented a super-hero? I'd especially like to hear from you if you were the child behind the might of Anthracite the living coal man. Even though I like to think Anthracite would've been helpless before the power of the Masked Manhunter, I'd still love to hear from you.

Spider-Man Comics Weekly #100.

It's January 11th, 1975, almost exactly a year since the treat of Spider-Man Comics Weekly #50, and the mag finally hits the big ton. So, seeing as we've reached a true landmark, how have things changed in the last 50 issues?

In terms of content, it's a bit difficult to say as, this being a special issue, the whole thing's dedicated to Spider-Man, meaning no Iron Man and no Thor.

First we get the concluding part of our hero's latest clash with the Chameleon, the one where he knows who the Chameleon is because he's trying to pass himself off as Peter Parker - the one person Spidey knows the Chameleon can't be.

Then we get Spider-Man's first not-so-epic encounter with that Antipodean antagonist the Kangaroo. It's probably the comic's bad luck that its hundredth issue just had to coincide with two less than classic tales. Still, like all Spider-Man outings of that era, they're highly readable, and they're nicely drawn by Jim Mooney, John Romita and John Buscema. Those were the days when Spider-Man's adventures were so awesome it took three artists to depict them.

What does leap out at me as being different from issue #50 is the change in the Zip-a-tone policy. It's still there on every panel but now it's being used with far more subtlety and judgement. I'm no expert on, "Zip-a-Tone Of The Early 1970s," but it looks to be a better quality of Zip-a-tone that's being used, meaning that, this time round, it doesn't seriously detract from artwork that's now allowed to benefit from the larger page size. Happily, the obsession with plastering large doses of solid black ink all over every panel's been abandoned.

If the stories aren't anything special we do at least get a couple of things that weren't in every issue. We get a centre-spread pin-up of Spidey's foes that's visually striking (if a little randomly composed) and, on the back cover are the latest two instalments of that year's Marvel calendar. I wonder if anyone ever actually cut it out and used it? I doubt it, the panels were a bit small and there wasn't anywhere to write notes about upcoming events and appointments. Then again, how many upcoming events and appointments did the average schoolboy need to make note of? Sadly, January gives away the fact that Gwen Stacy's going to die, something I don't remember caring about at the time despite the trauma it caused me when it actually happened.

Spider-Man Comics Weekly #50. Its part in my upfall.

I can't deny there's bad blood between me and Spider-Man Comics Weekly. It started when issue #1 came out and I excitedly opened it, all ready to take out and use the free Spider-Man mask we'd been promised -- only to be confronted by a red paper bag with two holes cut out the front.

What use was this to a man of my quality? How was I supposed to drive fear into the hearts of criminals, in such a garment?

Needless to say, that didn't stop me from wearing it while climbing on top of the washing machine. But still...

Then, in 1975, the comic mysteriously vanished from our local newsagents for several months, only to reappear just in time for it to kill Gwen Stacy. I need barely tell you I'm traumatised still by those events.

And then there was the title; Spider-Man Comics Weekly. I could never work it out. There was only one of it. So how come the plural title?

Still, in between such heinous misdeeds, I have to admit it gave me pleasure; bringing us the joys of Spider-Man and Thor before adding Iron Man to its roster. It then went on to ape The Titans' horizontal landscape format before merging with that very comic then regaining its vertical shape before being wrecked by ex-Starburst editor Dez Skinn who ditched the glossy covers and started to cram what seemed like a gazillion different stories into each issue. Sadly, by that point even I had to admit it was all over and the comic wasn't worth getting any more. It was a depressing end for what'd once been a cornerstone of Marvel's UK operation.

A couple of years ago, showing the sort of investment skills that'd make Warren Buffett jealous, I bought fifty copies of Spider-Man Comics Weekly. They've since been living where they like it, at the bottom of my wardrobe. Well, waste not want not. If they're not going to make me rich, they might as well be put to some use and, so, today I'm looking at the landmark issue #50. Next time out I'll be seeing how issue #100 compares.

Spider-Man, in the dark in more ways than one.

To open Spider-Man Comics Weekly #50 is to be flung into the world of that artist in The Fast Show, the one who kept going on about, "Black! Black! Everywhere black!" because the first thing that leaps out at you is the sheer quantity of black ink. It's everywhere. There's dotted Zip-a-tone here, stripey Zip-a-tone there, squiggly Zip-a-tone elsewhere. On top of that, some sort of anti-Vince Colletta's got loose on the thing. Whereas the mighty Mr Colletta would infamously white-out great chunks of artwork, someone here's been blacking out artwork on a spectacular scale. Clearly it was done to compensate for the lack of colour but it does exactly the opposite by rubbing your face in its absence.

It's a real shame because the thing's printed on what, to my untrained eyes, looks to be better quality paper than the original comics and with a better standard of printing. That, combined with the much larger page size, should make the stories look way better than the originals did. Instead, whole pages are rendered virtually unreadable. The odd thing is that none of this bothered me as a kid

Our lead story features Spider-Man vs Dr Octopus. Spidey's lost his memory, and Doc Ock convinces him that he and the tentacled terror are allies.

Next up, we get Thor in Asgard, vs the Absorbing Man, with just a little bit of The Demon thrown in. I believe the splash page for this is a panel from the previous issue blown up to a huge size, which was common practice in Marvel UK weeklies. Ironic that the story was inked by the aforementioned Vince Colletta, so you have an artist blacking out panels that'd previously been whited out.

But the issue's highlight is its third and final story. Up until now, the comic had featured just Spider-Man and Thor but things were a-changing at Marvel UK. With issue #48, the mag had switched to glossy covers and, with issue #50, Iron Man reprints were added. And so we get the story of how Tony Stark becomes the metal clad marvel. I still love this tale. Dated as it is, with its evil commies, its heroic American arms dealers and its Vietnam setting, there's still something about it that grabs me.

Apart from the Iron Man tale, the thing I most recall from the issue is there's a back page competition to design a super-hero.

I designed a super-hero for it. I think he was called the Masked Manhunter and had a costume that was a bit like the Black Panther's but with a long cape, and what looked like a pie tin strapped to this thigh. He was stood with his feet well apart as he prepared to draw the pistol from the holster on his other thigh. What the pie tin was for, I don't have a clue. Maybe it was in case he got peckish. Or maybe I thought it just looked cool.

The first prize was a colour TV.

Well, I say, "colour." Knowing Marvel UK, maybe it turned out to be a black and white one with loads of Zip-a-tone plastered all over it.